scholarly journals Skepticism, Criticism, and the Making of the Catholic Enlightenment: Rethinking the Career of Jean Hardouin

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 486-504
Author(s):  
Daniel J. Watkins
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Historical Criticism ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Catholic Enlightenment ◽  
The Impact

This article evaluates the early career of the French Jesuit Jean Hardouin (1646–1729) and the impact that it had on other Jesuit scholars of the first decades of the eighteenth century. It argues that Hardouin’s historical criticism—a response to skeptical critiques of the certainty of knowledge—pushed other Jesuit writers to consider new epistemological arguments and use new philosophical tools. In this way, Hardouin’s career helped motivate French Jesuit engagement with the ideas and sensibilities of the Enlightenment.

ALEXANDER GEDDES AT THE LIMITS OF THE CATHOLIC ENLIGHTENMENT

2010 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARK GOLDIE
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
Catholic Priest ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Catholic Enlightenment ◽  
French Republicanism ◽  
The Revolution ◽  
Episcopal Authority

ABSTRACTIn the closing decades of the eighteenth century, Alexander Geddes (1737–1802) pressed Catholicism and the Enlightenment to the limits of their tolerance. A Catholic priest, he fled the censure of his Scottish superiors and settled in England, where he became a spokesman for the Catholic laity in their controversies with the hierarchy, and mingled in radical Protestant circles among the ‘Rational Dissenters’. In three domains, he appalled his contemporaries. First, Geddes prepared a new version of the Bible, which threatened to undermine the integrity of revelation, and offered mythopoeic accounts of the Old Testament that influenced Blake and Coleridge. Second, he embraced ‘ecclesiastical democracy’, denouncing papal and episcopal authority and proclaiming British Catholics to be ‘Protesting Catholic Dissenters’. Third, he applauded French republicanism, and adhered to the Revolution long after Edmund Burke had rendered such enthusiasm hazardous. Geddes was an extreme exponent of the Catholic Enlightenment, yet equally he was representative of several characteristic strands of eighteenth-century Catholicism, which would be obliterated in the ultramontane revanche of the following century.

Analysis and the hierarchy of nature in eighteenth-century chemistry

2002 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
JONATHAN SIMON
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Chemical System ◽  
Plant Analysis ◽  
Mathematical Concepts ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Elementary Analysis ◽  
Vegetable Kingdom ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Elementary Chemical

What was the impact of Lavoisier's new elementary chemical analysis on the conception and practice of chemistry in the vegetable kingdom at the end of the eighteenth century? I examine how this elementary analysis relates both to more traditional plant analysis and to philosophical and mathematical concepts of analysis current in the Enlightenment. Thus I explore the relationship between algebra, Condillac's philosophy and Lavoisier's chemical system, as well as comparing Lavoisier's analytical approach to those of his predecessors, such as Baumé and Bucquet. With reference to the aims of vegetable analysis, I show how the dominance of elementary analysis devalued a tradition that sought to isolate immediate principles (plant extracts), marginalizing the chemical practices of many doctors and pharmacists in the context of the new chemistry in France.

Introduction: Enlightenment and Empire

2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Allan I. Macinnes ◽  
Jean-François Dunyach
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
North America ◽  
Financial Support ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Practical Experience ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Impact

The Enlightenment is here located in the global transmission of goods, people and ideas. The Scottish participation in Empires is explored through four distinctive themes. The first scrutinises how Whig and Jacobite perspectives on Enlightenment affected Scottish engagement with the British and other Empires. The second relates to the impact of Enlightenment thinking on the reputed decline of Spanish Empire on Scottish commercial access to Latin America. The third deals with enlightened critiques of Empire that were not necessarily sustained by observation and practical experience. The fourth explores through case studies the application of Enlightenment in North America and India. Most of the contributions were primarily given as papers to the Eighteenth Century Scottish Studies Society Conference held in Paris Sorbonne in July 2013 with the Adam Smith Society and the Centre Roland Mousnier (Sorbonne) on ‘Scotland, Europe and Empire in the Age of Adam Smith and Beyond’. This volume is published with the financial support of the Centre Roland Mousnier, Sorbonne University.

Modalities of Assimilation: Subcultural Currents in Felix Mendelssohn's Lieder Ohne Worte

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Dan Deutsch
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
German Culture ◽  
Historical Changes ◽  
The Real ◽  
Narrow Scope ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
German Jewry ◽  
The Impact

In this article I examine the impact on Felix Mendelssohn's music, as reflected in his Lieder ohne Worte (Songs without Words), of his affiliation with a German-Jewish subculture. To better understand the interrelationship between musical formations and sociocultural realities, I associate the real and imaginary tensions between the German, the Jewish, and the German-Jewish with stylistic ambiguities in Mendelssohn's piano songs, which often destabilize the lyrical simplicity projected by the lieder framework through formal complexities that exceed the narrow scope of the piano miniature. I establish the connections between Mendelssohn's music and sociocultural disposition by identifying a correlation between his so-called stylistic ‘conservatism’ and the anachronistic devotion of German Jewry to the universal ideals of the Enlightenment during the rise of German nationalism. Against this background, I primarily reveal the generic heterogeneity of the Lieder ohne Worte, which feature ‘progressive’ stylistic frameworks associated with the lied traditions yet concurrently point toward the formal ideals of eighteenth-century classicism. And following this, I position the stylistic duality of Mendelssohn's piano songs within a broader context through Heinrich Heine's essay The Romantic School, which sheds crucial light on the negotiation of Jewishness within German culture as it is reflected in aesthetic movements, historical changes, and political climates.

The Catholic Enlightenment and Popular Education in the Prince-Bishopric of Würzburg, 1765–95

1988 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-30
Author(s):  
John Christopher Doney
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Popular Education ◽  
Distinctive Character ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Catholic Enlightenment ◽  
Parish Schools

In the last decades of the eighteenth century the Enlightenment (Aufklärung) flourished in Catholic Germany, developing a distinctive character there. Nothing lay more at the heart of enlightened interests than the reform of pedagogy, and in particular the education of children in parish schools and catechetical classes. This article focuses on the reform of popular education in the Prince-Bishopric (Hochstift) of Würzburg between 1765 and 1795 both to help in defining the goals and policies of the Catholic Enlightenment and to evaluate the extent of its success.

scholarly journals Ex-Jesuit Librarian-Scholars Adam František Kollár and György Pray: Baroque Tradition, National Identity, and the Enlightenment among Jesuits in the Eastern Habsburg Lands

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 467-485
Author(s):  
Paul Shore
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Library Science ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
International Reputation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Hungarian Language ◽  
The Impact

The former Jesuits Adam František Kollár and György Pray each devoted much of their careers to work in libraries; thereby contributing to the literary and scholarly culture of the eastern Habsburg lands during the second half of the eighteenth century. Kollár, who left the Jesuits early in his career, authored works defending the rights of the Hungarian crown, and chronicled the history of the Rusyn people, ultimately achieved an international reputation as a scholar, coining the term ethnologia. Pray is remembered for his discovery of the oldest written example of the Hungarian language, his extensive historical publications, and for his role, following the papal suppression of 1773, as “Historiographus Hungariae” (Hungary’s hagiographer). The impact of these scholarly efforts by these former Jesuits was a rich and enduring foundation upon which later Hungarian historiography and library science would be based.

Slavery, Ideology, and Institutional Change: the Impact of the Enlightenment on Slavery in Late Eighteenth-Century Maranhão

1979 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin M. Maclachlan
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Impact

Every institution rests upon a philosophical base that both supports it and lends a certain character to its functions. As the philosophical support changes, one can expect institutional change to follow. Responding to the philosophical environment, an institution may be modified or, if support is withdrawn, fade into history. Institutions, however, do not react in a uniform fashion. The degree of change depends on the social consequences, as well as upon the possibility of achieving reform without an unacceptable amount of disorder.

scholarly journals Introduction: The Culture of Jesuit Erudition in an Age of Enlightenment

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 387-415
Author(s):  
Jeffrey D. Burson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
French Enlightenment ◽  
Catholic Enlightenment ◽  
Age Of Enlightenment ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Individual

Although works on religious, specifically Catholic, and more specifically Jansenist, contributions to the Enlightenment abound, the contributions of the Jesuits to the Enlightenment have remained relatively unexplored since Robert R. Palmer initially identified affinities between Jesuit thought and the emergence of the French Enlightenment as long ago as 1939. Accordingly, this introduction and the essays contained within the pages of this special issue revisit and further explore ways in which the individual Jesuits contributed to broader patterns of European intellectual and cultural history during the age of Enlightenment. Taken together, the contributions to this special issue investigate different aspects of an important question: to what extent were some Jesuits (at time, despite themselves, and at times, even against the grain of the order’s official positions) unlikely contributors to the Enlightenment? This question of whether one might speak of a specifically Jesuit Enlightenment is complicated by the still unsatisfactory scholarly consensus regarding the definition of the Enlightenment. But, growing scholarly attention to the nature of Catholic Enlightenment, and to the continuities linking eighteenth-century preoccupations to the controversies of the seventeenth century have further underscored the need for greater attention to Jesuit contributions to the Enlightenment itself. In this introduction, rather than considering the Enlightenment as a series of transformative and largely eighteenth-century debates rooted in the middle or late seventeenth century, I suggest that Jesuit engagement with the Enlightenment is best understood if the Enlightenment is more firmly anchored somewhat earlier in the culture of late Humanism—a culture that was first weaponized then chastened within the crucible of the European Reformations.

scholarly journals Porcelain and Catholic Enlightenment: The Zwettler Tafelaufsatz

2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 116-134
Author(s):  
Matthew Martin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
World Order ◽  
Human Learning ◽  
Divine Revelation ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Catholic Enlightenment ◽  
The One ◽  
Representative Function ◽  
The Church

The mastery of a hard-paste porcelain technology in Dresden in 1708 was a major natural philosophical achievement for the European Enlightenment. From the outset, the material possessed a representative function at the Saxon court, where it served to promote the power and cultural prestige of the Wettin dynasty. As porcelain factories were established at courts across Europe, however, the material's signifying role became complex. On the one hand, its alchemical associations aligned it with unfettered princely power in the realm of the absolutist court. On the other, its origins in laboratory investigation could indicate a princely engagement with the Enlightenment pursuit of scientific knowledge. These contradictory associations reached an apogee in the so-called “Catholic Enlightenment,” producing artworks that sought to consolidate the church. This paper analyzes the Zwettler Tafelaufsatz—the great porcelain table centerpiece that was created in 1768 as part of a multimodal baroque celebration of Abbot Rayner Kollmann's jubilee at the Cistercian monastery of Zwettl in Lower Austria. Here the porcelain medium enabled the Cistercian brethren to argue for the continuing role of monasteries and monastic scholarship in eighteenth-century Enlightenment learning, while simultaneously declaring the limits of human learning and the ultimate supremacy of divine revelation in the context of an absolutist world order.

Dissent and Education

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Burden
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Educational Activity ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Higher Educational Institutions ◽  
Legal Restrictions ◽  
Higher Educational ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Dissenting Academies

Much eighteenth-century Dissenting educational activity was built on an older tradition of Puritan endeavour. In the middle of the seventeenth century, the godly had seen education as an important tool in spreading their ideas but, in the aftermath of the Restoration, had found themselves increasingly excluded from universities and schools. Consequently, Dissenters began to develop their own higher educational institutions (in the shape of Dissenting academies) and also began to set up their own schools. While the enforcement of some of the legal restrictions that made it difficult for Dissenting institutions diminished across the eighteenth century, the restrictions did not disappear entirely. While there has been considerable focus on Dissenting academies and their contribution to debates about doctrinal orthodoxy, the impact of Dissenting schools was also considerable.

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